''So they`re hard, too hard, like this,'' he said, rapping his knuckles on the glass-topped desk tucked into a sliver of an office in Giolitti`s main store, just down the cobblestone street from Italy`s lower house of Parliament.

''Plus they can`t keep it natural when they have such big distribution areas,'' said Giolitti, who is the fourth generation in the family business.

''Ours is completely natural and so it doesn`t keep more than a couple of days.''

Whether it is the scarcity of home deep freezers or just the Italian custom of punctuating a leisurely ''passeggiata'' (stroll) with a stop for a snack, Romans rarely lug cartons of ice cream home for an in-house treat.

They tend to eat it on the move, strolling to fancy ice cream parlors like Giolitti`s or to little neighborhood bars or cafes that set up freezers in the warmer months.

Standard flavors are ''crema,'' similar to American vanilla; chocolate;

coffee; strawberry; hazelnut; lemon; and orange. Also popular is ''baci''

(kisses), based on the chocolate and hazelnut confection that is the Italian version of the Hershey chocolate ''Kiss.''

Pulling out a handful of much-thumbed address books from his desk drawer, Giolitti read aloud his father`s recipe for hazelnut ice cream, which starts with a kilo--2.2 pounds--of egg yolks.

In the tile kitchen where the ice creams are made, Giolitti introduced an elderly man named Bruno, who is standing over a nearly 3-foot-high soup pot of fresh bananas.

Dressed in white shirt, white pants, white apron and rubber boots, Bruno was dumping the last of the peeled bananas into the pot after having completed his daily routine of separating--by hand--2,700-3,000 eggs.

Once the yolks are separated they are combined with the rest of the ingredients to be pasteurized.

Giolitti`s back room looks as much like a laundry as a kitchen, with a row of stainless steel, washing machine-sized pasteurizers lined up against a green tile wall. Large industrial thermometers sit like oversized daisies atop each machine to make temperature checks easy.

The front rooms are virtually always mobbed until the 2 a.m. closing time, although the crowds rarely get as unmanageable as those that flocked there just after the end of World War II.